Fieldwork and Language Documentation

Graduate Field Methods Course History

This page summarizes the history of graduate instruction in linguistic field methods at Berkeley, with information about academic year, language(s), consultant(s), and instructor(s), when known. Links in the Language column are to archival collections in the California Language Archive (CLA). The information has been reconstructed from archival course catalogs, which occasionally do not reflect the ultimate instructor of record, and in consultation with Linguistics faculty, graduate students, alumni, and records in the CLA. We will...

Laryngeal features and segmental length: Cases studies in Yánesha’, Barese, Maranese, and Italian

Allegra Robertson
2025

This dissertation examines the relationship between laryngeal features and the segment
in four languages, with a focus on phonetic traits, phonological representation, and the roles
of length, weight, and stress. The case studies present laryngeal phenomena from disparate
language contexts that are united in their subsegmental nature and typologically unexpected
occurrence: laryngealized vowels in Yánesha’ (Arawakan), pre-aspirated geminate stops in
Barese (Upper Southern Italo-Romance) and the local variety of Standard Italian (Cen-
tral Italo-Romance), and post-...

Language Revitalization Working Group

The Language Revitalization Working Group offers a space to critically examine theories, methodologies, and applications of language revitalization in a variety of world contexts. Additionally, we provide a centralized venue for interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners of language revitalization to share, present, discuss, and improve their language revitalization efforts.

In Spring 2025, we will meet every other Wednesday from 3-4 p.m. (PST) in a hybrid format: if you're on campus you can join us in-person, and if you're not, you can join via...

CLA updates

March 17, 2025

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

Thanks to the efforts of Shweta Akolkar and Wendy Costa, we've accessioned a second series to the Heather Hardy Collection of Tolkapaya Yavapai Language Materials, consisting of 23 cassette recordings of Molly Fasthorse (1910-2000). Yavapai is a Yuman language of Arizona. The recordings span collaborations at UCLA in the late 1970s and at the University of North Texas in 1981.

CLA updates

March 10, 2025

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

We've digitized Jaime de Angulo's manuscript The Clear Lake Dialect of the Pomo Language. In the last several weeks, we've hosted State Secretary of Tribal Affairs Christina Snider-Ashtari and colleagues, Native high schoolers from the Ukiah region, who were able to consult the notes and recordings especially of past Berkeley students and alums Abraham Halpern, Robert Oswalt (PhD 1961), and Eero Vihman on Northern Pomo (Pomoan; CA), and Tribal visits representing Washo (isolate; CA, NV), Northern Sierra and Plains Miwok (Miwokan; CA), and Tachi (Yokutsan; CA), these visits sponsored by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (AICLS).

CLA updates

February 20, 2025

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

In the last couple of years, Bernat Bardagil (postdoc 2018-2020) has facilitated the acquisition of three legacy collections of materials related to Mỹky (isolate; Brazil). One of these collections has been accessioned. The two others, from the family of American missionary Robert Meader (1912-1997) and German anthropologist Gisela Pauli, are currently being cataloged. Digital copies of photographs and -- thanks to the quick work of Digital Revolution -- sound recordings are already making their way home. In the photographs below, Mỹky-speaking elders peruse some of Meader's photographs, dating from 1936 forward (top, February 2024), and listen to Pauli's recordings of the late Tapurá, from 1996 (bottom, February 2025).

CLA updates

January 26, 2025

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

Did you miss our end-of-year newsletter? Read it here! We have made available digital copies of 11 cassette tape recordings made by musicologist Susana Weich-Shahak in Peru in 1974 and 1975, consisting of stories, songs, and conversations in Arakmbut (Harakmbut), Ashaninka (Arawakan), Máíjĩ̵̀kì (Tukanoan), and Yagua (Peba-Yaguan), from the communities of Shintuya, Cutivireni, Sucusari, and Catalán, respectively (listen to an excerpt of Luis Ríos's (Bábì) story of Maineno in Máíjĩ̵̀kì here). The larger collection, the Colección de Materiales de Lenguas Peruanas de Susana Weich-Shahak, was previously accessioned, and additionally includes 8mm film and photographic slides, all of which are also now digitized. Zachary Wellstood, together with Nellie and R. David Zorc, has accessioned Documenting Aklanon Morphosyntax. The collection consists of materials spanning a field methods course at the University of Maryland in 2018 and 2019, with Maria Polinsky and Omer Preminger (recordings and notes in bundles 001-021), and telephone-based research afterward. The documentation focuses on grammatical topics.

Mam course offered at UC Berkeley

January 19, 2025

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies just launched a free (non-credit) Mam class for the spring semester. See here for more information.

Berkeley linguists present at SSILA

January 22, 2025

Congrats to the Berkeley linguists who will be presenting their work at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, taking place online from January 24 to 26:

Anna Björklund: "The structure of the Nomlaki verb" Maksymilian Dąbkowski: "Teasing the A'ingae discourse and conditional marking apart"

New review of Garrett book

December 12, 2024

A review by Chloé Laplantine of Andrew Garrett's book The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California has appeared in the journal Histoire Épistémologie Langage 46/2 (2024): ...